[Keith]

Hello all, I'm new to this group and at 60, have decided it's time to exorcize the scars of parental emotional abuse and non sexual physical abuse that I experienced as a child. When I ran away from the abuse at home, I was a victim of sexual abuse after I became a runaway. This note is just a little introductory to announce I've joined the forum and to say what I'm working on. I'm ordering the manual and need to do some studying to launch into this. I'm also going to reference Dr. Steven Farmers writing as an adjunct perspective.

I suppose I'm like many others here that will, or has, written their story in a book; maybe even seek publication. If I can reach out to the abused and their abusers and help one victim or prevent anyone else from being a victim, that would be a blessing. I wish us all healing, Namaste.

[gwendolyn76]

I feel so sick to my stomach this morning. I feel like I can't breathe. I hate going through this. Certain things trigger me, and I definitely feel under attack. I woke up from this terrible dream. I was reaching out to touch this beautiful flower in a garden. But then it turned into my parents and they were trying to pull me into the ground. I could feel dirt going into my mouth. I was trying to scream, but no sound was coming out. Then all of a sudden I was back into my childhood, reliving a moment I hadn't thought about until last night. At the moment, in current times, my mother is very sick. I talked to her yesterday on the phone. She wants to see me. I know why. She is dying. She has been sick for a while. I don't know if I can go and see her. Since I talked to her again, I have been re-living everything. That terrible dream. I'm still not sure if I'm awake yet. It was so terrifying to me. We are in the bathroom at my grandmother's house. But my grandparents are in the other room screaming at each other. It is in their native language. I don't understand most of it, because my mother refuses to speak their language anymore. I am in the bathroom, my mother is running the water in the tub. She says I have to be cleansed. The door is locked. I am afraid, because she has a terrible blank look on her face. And I know what that means. She makes me take off my clothes and get into the tub. The water feels funny, really slick, and oily. I don't like it. Some of it gets into my mouth and tastes bad. But then she takes out the Comet cleaner, the one she makes me clean with all the time. I hate the way it smells. She dumps it on my head. She tells me that I am a bastard child and that because I am not pure blooded like her I cannot go back to her native land. Her parents have told her no. She is angry they will not take me there. She sticks my head under the water. And rips my hair backwards. And starts cutting my hair off. I remember seeing it floating in the green, foamy water. I want out. Please stop. I am silently crying. Because if I say a word, it will be worse... I am about 7 years old. My hair is almost all gone. It had been really long. I can't remember what happens after that. I just remember later on hiding behind the couch and being there for a long time. And just silence. I was afraid to come out. But I remember the curtains. The texture of the material, and the color. The drapes. The color of the wall. And the couch. It was always the same. It was always very clean. I can never remember seeing anything out of place...

[gwendolyn76]

I have offered to drive my mom to the doctor today. I don't know why. Or what is going through my head right now. I just got off the phone with her. She needs treatment (i.v.meds), and has to go to the doctor's office every week. And a whole lot of other medical issues are happening. And things are changing rapidly now. I know what is coming. It doesn't make it any easier. She has an option to discontinue her dialysis treatment anytime now, since, I believe she has metastatic cancer. But has not come out to tell me that yet. She wants to talk to me today. I am the only family she has left. She says she needs help, if I am able. Or willing. I guess she has just forgotten all the rest. I feel numb right now. I know I don't want her to suffer. I still love her. No matter of all the pain of the past. I don't want to treat her the way she treated me. That is my power today. My choice to be strong. And it is hard. And I am scared. I am trying not to cry. For all the things. For all the times I needed a set of good parents. For all the moments I needed a hug. Some food. Some clean clothes. A clean house. Some heat. Some shoes. The things I needed for school. Some alone time. My own space. Some encouragement. Understanding. Love. A smile. Just to be held. Not to be used. Not to lie to me. Or take away my dog and tell me it got ran over by the garbage truck, because you didn't want to provide for it anymore. I loved that dog. I walked him everyday, and cleaned up after him.
I am crying. I have to get off of here now. See what today is going to bring.

[gwendolyn76]

I am so tired. I am not getting enough sleep. I have so much to do today, and I want to crawl back into the bed. I dreamed last night I was floating on a river, on a lily pad. I was floating slow at first, and then really fast. The river was twisting and there were rapids and rocks. But I felt safe, and was having fun. Then the river dwindled down to a thin stream and then the lily pad dropped me off on the bank. I looked around and my boyfriend and kids, brother was there. They were cheering for me. I guess that's a good sign! Maybe this is a more healing journey than I have ever been on yet. I hope so. I am so tired.
I drove my mom to the doctor yesterday. It was weird. I wanted to just come back home. She is struggling with her medical bills/medicines. I don't think she can afford to live on her own very much longer. I found a social worker at her dr.'s office, and did speak with her. She told me she thought I was over-compensating for my mom, she can tell by my face. Holy cow. Over-compensating. Never heard anyone tell me that before. I guess she is right though. I just want to get on a plane and get out of here. I feel sorry for my mom, but don't want to get involved with all of her health issues. She wouldn't do it for me, I'm pretty sure of that. I don't know what to do, I guess it is day to day now. There is no way I could let her live with me. Just can't do it. But I will try to help her find some more affordable housing, and help with transportation, as now she is not able to drive due to her sight is failing. The woman that was so vain and hateful, is covered in skin cancers and going blind. And on dialysis. My boyfriend says what goes around, comes back around. But I don't want to be mean. To me, it feels wrong. But I am afraid to get close to her, I mean, to be a part of her life again actively. I feel like crawling behind the couch again, like I did when I was younger. Or back in the bed. I feel like a big venomous trap is being set. And I am the prey.

[Patches]

Gwendolyn - I can so relate to your posts, even though my situation is probably very different than yours. Both of my parents are aging; my 84 year old father has cancer in his bones and my 79 year old mother has undiagnosed dementia (despite my success at getting her to see a geriatric psychiatrist). Although she lives only an hour away from me, and we somehow manage to stay on speaking terms, I have a great deal of fear of being "trapped" by her declining mental state. My father lives quite far from me, and is wealthy enough to have hired a full time home health aid, thank God.

My older sister lives all the way across the country from all of us, and my brother is schizophrenic, so nobody expects either of them to provide any significant support. But I have struggled with PTSD for the past 6 years since I experienced flashbacks of 2 incidents of childhood sexual abuse outside of my family. Nobody in my family has been of any support to me emotionally, although I continual try to explain to them my desperate need for help remembering how it happened that I was abused and nobody ever noticed. I'm quite certain that my brother knows about the first incident, which occurred when I was 7 or 8 years old, and took place in the home of his friend. But he refuses to talk about it, in fact he lied the most ridiculous lie to me when I asked him about his memories of playing Pop Warner football, while I was a cheerleader for his team. When I asked him why he would lie to me and had he not considered how that would make me feel suspicious of him he merely said that he didn't want to get involved in my problems. My father then told me that "your brother has his own problems" which made clear to me that he too has no interest in getting involved in the matter of my brother lying and evading me as if I had done something wrong. My sister has cut me off because she says that I push people away with my "barbed comments" and that she has too many problems of her own to handle being in contact with me.

My mother was always very weak and incompetent as a parent of 3 children and an alcoholic husband. She had no idea how to discipline my sister and brother, and couldn't seem to do anything about the fact that my brother teased and made me cry on a daily basis, and occasionally hit me. She was more concerned with the fact that he was a juvenile delinquent and always getting in trouble at school and with the police. She held my father responsible for disciplining him, but my father was hardly ever around when my brother acted up. She never identified my father as being alcoholic because both of her parents were "heavy drinkers" and she thought it was normal. Now she gets drunk on less than one glass of wine, but finishes it and often has a 2nd glass before getting in her car to drive home. She got a DUI once, for getting caught with a travel mug that she had been drinking wine from while driving to a singing class. Naturally, she excuses herself for that because it was nearly empty and it was all she had had to drink and only for the purpose of relaxing before she got up to sing. Like, she's been going to these singing classes for over 10 years but she still needs a glass of wine to "relax" so she can sing better? I sometimes wish she would just get it over with and smash up her car and seriously injure some innocent person, or better yet, fall down the stairs in her own home and see how long it takes for anyone to find out that she broke her leg or hip. My family all think that I'm selfish and uncaring about her, even though they know that I've done more than my share of dealing with alcoholism with my ex-husband and father of my only child. And yet they seem to think that I will be the one to take care of my mother when the time comes. I've told them all that there is no way in hell that I will ever help her.

I don't think I could ever forget the time that I was feeling numb and apathetic about my ruined life while suffering from PTSD, and my mother asked me to drive down to her house so she could take care of me. The next day she took me to an emergency room and persuaded me to voluntarily check myself in to a psych hospital in rural Pennsylvania that was bad beyond words. I was stuck there for nearly 2 months, including my birthday, Christmas and New Years. I never got one ounce better, and I wound up stuck with a huge bill that took over a year for me to pay. Money that I could have been using for therapy or groceries, being paid every month to the snake pit that had done absolutely nothing to help me.

I hadn't ever said that I was suicidal in any way, I was merely guilty of laying on my mother's couch all day, saying I didn't feel like doing anything. None of this would have happened if she hadn't persuaded me to come to her house in the first place. Now she tells me that she didn't "put me in that hospital" but that [i]I put myself there by my own actions[/i]. I don't think I can ever forgive her for that because it is such a clear illustration of how she has handled any significant problem I ever had in my entire life. So I look forward to the day that I can see her in a shitty nursing home and I can say to her that she put herself there by her own actions.

Oh, but I almost forgot the really important thing that I wanted to say which was about being so tired. I don't feel that way now, but it wasn't long ago that I did. I felt so tired from having interrupted sleep and 3 nights of no sleep at all over a 2 week period of time. I felt so physically exhausted that I called a hotline and was persuaded (once again) to go to an emergency room. This time I took myself there, on the condition that an advocate meet me there, which she did. She assured me that it was a good hospital, and she reassured me while I was in the psych ER when one of the doctors said something that really made me livid. I stayed though, and was very glad that I did. After a week there I felt like I had really received good care and was ready to go home. I ended up hiring the psychiatrist that treated me there as my outpatient doctor, and I feel good knowing that if I ever have to go to the hospital again I will be treated by someone who really knows me. It makes me so frustrated to think of all the times I've been hospitalized and never received any continuity of care.

So what I wanted to say is that sleep is HUGE, especially to people like us. If you aren't able to get adequate sleep, you really must get help ASAP. For me, living alone, I could not rely on myself to make sure that I got to bed and stayed there for 8 hours each night. There were too many distractions at home, too many things to clean and rearrange, too many things to read, and too many thoughts to be expressed in any way I could find. Going to a hospital was the only option for me, and that sucks, but I'm glad that I did it.

Take care.

[gaillardia]

I don't know where to begin except to say I am greatful to find this site & hope that my sharing will help someone here. I have found that my reading of other peoples storys has reopened memories & perhaps feelings that have been buried all these many a yr. My father my abuser finally died this past March, and a friend said you will finally be free, but I am not.
I still feel guilt for not being & doing the right thing for him. I am the only one left in my immediate family so it was my responsibility to care for my demented father. I know most people would say it was not my responsibility to care for the very person that F--- uped my life. I had so many mixed emotions about it, my husband hated him because he has suffered because of my inability to love him & be a loving wife. I don't really love my self completely. I have been in therapy for 2-3yrs now, & still feel I have been going in the same circle. I want to finally have some closure & become a normal happy soul before my time comes to leave this earth. My 62 birthday is not far away & I want to finally have Peace in my life.
My therapist claims I have made progress but I do not believe it to be completely true.
So thankful to be able to post my feelings in a safe place where there are others who know how I feel ;I am not alone. Blessing to everyone & look forward to interreacting if anyone wishes to.

[Lostgirlinside26]

A few years ago all the memories that i had blacked out had come to surface to haunt me. i had a hard time dealing with it all... I had just had a baby so i am not sure if that caused all the flash backs or that my ex husband was having an afair. what ever it was it made me deal with feelings i hadn't really delt with...

I am not really sure when the abuse started but from talking with a family member I am sure i was a toddler. My older brother had been sexually abused by some boys in the neighborhood. I remember him going to a hospital for it. and a couple instances he abused me. This was all vegue because i was so young.

The biggest memories i had to face was when i was 7 or 8yrs old and was abused by my own father. I told my mother and she asked me what i wanted her to do????? why would you ask an 8 yr old that? i felt like it would be all my fault if i said leave him. I remember asking her to never leave me home again. ( she didnt)

I can reflect and see how the abuse has affected my adult life. My relationships with men. Expecially with my ex husband. He would constantly complain i wasnt affectionate enough, but grope me all the time (which made me feel like i was 8 again) but he didnt know what i had been through and why i would pull away. when i finally came out and started talking about it he was shocked of course. he would try to be close and when i would pull away he would say things like i am not your dad. I just wanted some space to process everything.

I feel I have come a long way since then but I still think how F***ed up it is i still have a relationship with my father...its an awkward one, i cant even hug him (its all a family secret) going about our lives like it never happened. I have had many conversations with my mother regarding the abuse and she feels it shouldnt be brought up. I feel too coward to bring it up, even though i know it was not my fault! I also feel like i should tell my current boyfriend we have been together for a year. I feel like i am keeping something from him when i should be able to confide in him like when we watch tv and something comes on about child molestation and incest i sit in silence but screaming on the inside to change the chanel and feeling sick. Based on how things went with my ex husband after i told him, It frightens me to take a chance on loosing the one man i have found in my life i can trust and fully love.

I fear that something might happen to my son, though i have talked with my twin brother and he said he was never sexually abused. I just secretly wish my dad would kick the bucket cause i could be relieved of all the worry and pain. is that horrible?

If any one has any advice please help.

[gaillardia]

Hi everyone, where do I begin. I guess with the present @ 61 yrs. of age I still suffer from the effects of my fathers sexual abuse. I don't remember it very clearly, we were taught to forget it happened. My mother lived in a world of denial. So we pretended to be a NORMAL family.
I think my father started grooming me when I was very young I have a picture he took of me in my crib I was naked & crying with my legs crossed. Did he start that far back I will never know. When I was around 7 or 8 he would have me go to bed with him & play innocently he would tickle me & I got on his back & played ride the horsey it all was so innocent. I really loved my Daddy way back then I was his special little girl. The next memory I have was when I must have been 12 or 13 , he came down to me in the basement where there was a bed, he told me he was going to show me what boys do to girls , so that I would be aware of there advances. I don't know why i didn't question him or ask him to stop. it felt good. I enjoyed being touched by him & I did not think it was a bad thing he was doing. Because I did not stop him he would continue to touch me inappropriately on many occasions. I recall him coming into my little bed & touching me in my private places; I did not stop him it felt so nice . My father bought me a new bedroom set for my birthday & guess what it was a big double size mattress, I had no clue at the time why he bought such a big bed. He would come in the middle of the night & fondle me. My room was adjoining my parents; didn't my Mother know or suspect?
She may have because she was very violent with me she would scream @ me throw things at me, I just thought I was a bad girl & deserved the abuse she gave me , I never felt that she loved me, my brother was her favorite.
There was one night when he actually would have had actual intercourse & I was not aware , he left the bed abruptly. He never came back, then he started being angry with me saying I had the devil in me, he sent for a priest to come the house to remove the devil. I don't remember much after that except I finally told my friend what my father did to me. I wanted to runaway from home The Beatles wrote a song titled" She's Leaving Home" & so I planned to leave my home where no one loved me. So I took my fathers money from the metal box in there bedroom & left to run away to California, like the Mama's & the Papa's song "California Dreaming," it all seemed like a great idea.
I eventually came back home & it was horrible I was all my fault, my mother had shock therapy to forget what had happened. But it didn't work she still remembered, I was the scape goat of the family. I could do nothing right, so I played the part, I skipped school kept running away, my parents did not know how to handle me so they put me in a insitution for troubled children. It only made things worse for me, they never came to visit , I could not talk to my shrink because he was a man & I did not trust him, it was a night mare. I may have been there for a yr. came back home & was placed in a work program & at that time thought I was a mental case, not like every body else, my self esteem if I ever had any was gone. So I meet a boy fromn Equador he spoke no english, became pregant , ran away again. This time my father found me & had me locked up in a real nut house. They medicated me & I was frightened of spending the rest of my life there. That day when I had to meet with the panel of doctors I stood there & finally told them what my father had done to me and I was released. Because I was pregant & a embarrassment to my mother I was sent away again to a unwed mothers home,where I was to give up my child because I was told that it was the best thing I could do for the little girl that was growing inside me.
I will stop for now, it felt good to release the memories, thank you for having this forum I look forward to reading others storys & sharing more of mine.
Blessings to all

[Risuchama]

I just spent the last 2 hours typing this, just to find that I auto-logged and my post disappeared. So, this is the short version- because I can't convince myself to wait until tomorrow to re-do this.
I am a 20 year old, putting myself through college. I am in a long-term relationship with a young man with whom I want to make a family and spend the rest of my life. It is because of him, and because of the future I can finally see before me, that I want to take the steps to heal myself and let go of my hatred and bitterness for my parents.
The abuse began after my parents divorced and remarried; my mother (I found out as a teen) had a similar upbringing as my sisters and I, in that she had a step father that she did not get along with and a mother that neglected her.
[This is a seriously abriged version of what I wrote earlier; I spent a lot of space speculating on my mother's personality and my step father's emotional issues.] To summarize, he would often lose control either from rage or depression (and often beer) and use excessive force against my sisters or I; our mother was neglectful when this first started, staying late at work to avoid the situation at home and ignoring her kids when she was there. Later on, she tended to be verbally abusive, sometimes blaming for the physical abuse, and often starting vicious arguments with her daughters to blow off steam. She would also day awful, disrespectful things to strangers about us, before turning around and bragging when she thought she could get attention for it. I feel that her behavior, more that my step father's violence, has affected my personality.
[a point that, in the original post, came a lot sooner: I am on the Autism Spectrum, having been diagnosed my first year of college. There has been some speculation that my symptoms of social anxiety and disrupted sleep, among other things, could be attributed to (in part or whole) my history of emotional abuse. For the sake of my recovery journey, I am remaining open to that possibility, while trying to modify steps to keep the pace safe for me in that regard.]
I decided to take this journey of recovery, because I recognize in myself a lack of trust in people, bitterness, and fear. I had to move back in with my family for a summer after about 2 years of independence so I could stay close to my on-campus job, and (in spite of being at work and avoiding my family most of the time), the experience set me back to a point of no sleep and endless anxiety like I haven't felt since I first moved out, even though I am living on campus again. I am worried that I am not far enough away from them to be challenging myself to heal, but I am tired of how my mistrust of people is souring my relationships, and I am tired of letting my mother control how I live my life, even outside of her direct influence. I want to do this so that I can pursue the future I want for myself without letting my past or my self hold me away from it.
[again, this is REALLY shortened from the original post that got eaten by the malevolent internet spirits; I hope my original feeling gets through (and not my anger at my computer!)]